ABSTRACT “Meister Eckhart’s Mysticism in Comparison with Zen Buddhism” originally appeared as the concluding section of Ueda Shizuteru’s first book, Die Gottesgeburt in der Seele und der Durchbruch zur Gottheit: Die mystische Anthropologie Meister Eckharts und ihre Konfrontation mit der Mystik des Zen-Buddhismus. It was first published in 1965 as an expanded version of Ueda’s doctoral dissertation, which was written under the supervision of Ernst Benz at the University of Marburg. Ueda’s careful analysis not only illuminates important (...) points of affinity between Eckhart and Zen, but also explains why Eckhart’s mysticism cannot be simply interchanged with Zen Buddhism. To allow the reader to read for themselves, I kept all interpretative notes to a minimum. The text is translated from the most recent edition of the German text, published in 2018 by Verlag Karl Alber, and edited by Wolf Burbat. The German pagination is interpolated in bold throughout the text. (shrink)

近代日本において一様に捉えきれない多様な「悪」の姿と、それがどのように扱われたのかを、イデオロギーと実践の双方の面から描く。.

In April of 2006, the prominent cultural anthropologist Noriyuki Ueda sat down with the Dalai Lama for a two day conversation. This book is based on that long and lively conversation in Dharamsala.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Reception of Husserl’s Phenomenology in Japanese PhilosophyShinji HamauzuWhen we talk about the influence of Husserl’s phenomenology, we should discuss in advance what can justify this talk. When we mention keywords— for instance, intuition of essence, intentionality, inner time-consciousness, rigorous science, natural attitude, phenomenological reduction, transcendental phenomenology, noesis-noema, my living body, genetic phenomenology, empathy, intersubjectivity, life-world, and so on—which keywords should we use when talking about the influence Husserl’s (...) phenomenology had on Japanese philosophy? But we should also ask the following question as well: Which of Husserl’s texts could be available for scholars of Japanese philosophy? Interestingly, there were few works, beyond attending Husserl’s lectures, that one could access, because he only published six books and six articles while he was alive. After Husserl died in 1938, many manuscripts were rescued from the Nazi’s hands and placed at Leuven University in Belgium where the Husserl Archive was first established. The manuscripts were edited and published as Husserliana beginning in 1950 (which now has 42 volumes). Given this, we can think of Husserl’s work as consisting of two periods: the period before and the period after the publication of Husserliana.I myself am interested in the problem of “intersubjectivity” within Husserl’s phenomenology. It is on the one hand the problem of “other-experience (Fremderfahrung)”—i.e., “how I experience the other”—which is the problem of other-experience in the empirical dimension. But it is on the other hand the problem of “intersubjective constitution”—i.e., “how the objective world is the correlate of intersubjective constitution through other-experience,”1 which is the problem of how the other participates in the transcendental dimension. It is characteristic of Husserl’s phenomenology that these two problems are discussed together inseparably. [End Page 1]The manuscripts on the problem of “intersubjectivity” from 1905 to 1935 are collected in volumes XIII to XV of Husserliana. Although the fifth meditation of Cartesian Meditations (first published in French translation in 1931) is often mentioned as the representative work on this theme, it is no more than the tip of the iceberg after Husserl struggled for many years on this problem. The genesis of this theme in the manuscripts dates back to 1905 when terms such as “other” (ein Anderer) and “foreign” (fremd) appeared in manuscript 1, or terms such as “empathy” (Einfühlung) and “intersubjective” appeared in manuscript 2. Husserl wrote later that he had discussed this theme to a relatively large extent in the lecture Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology (Hua XIII) in 1910–1911. In the period of 1905–1910, after the “problem of intersubjectivity” was first introduced, we can also find the idea of “phenomenological reduction” appear for the first time in the literature. This tells us that the problem of intersubjectivity and the idea of phenomenological reduction were born as two sides of the same coin.When Husserl’s phenomenology was first introduced to Japan, Japanese scholars were already reading the first volume of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, where the “intersubjective world” is thought to refer to a “correlate of experience mediated by empathy,”2 and so the task is to clarify the “intersubjective constitution of the objective world.”3 However, when we consider Husserl’s influence in the history of Japanese philosophy and examine whether the problem of intersubjectivity is discussed as a fundamental problem of philosophy, it can be doubted, in my opinion, whether or not there were any researchers who ever faced this problem seriously. In what follows, I survey several generations of philosophers in Japan who engaged with Husserl’s rehabilitation, to investigate the problem of intersubjectivity in his reception and extent of his influence.Nishida Kitarō’s Interest in PhenomenologyNishida Kitarō (1870–1945) looked back at the revision of his first book in 1936 and wrote,The standpoint of this book [An Inquiry into the Good (1911)] is that of consciousness, which might be thought of as a kind of psychologism... I came to realize that it is not that experience exists because there is an individual, but that an individual exists because there is experience. I... (shrink)

While there are many studies that address how well Japanese companies have adopted explicit CSR practices, our understanding of their own views on such practices is still limited, particularly of the difference in their views before and after the process of making implicit CSR explicit. The present research thus aims to address this apparent change by providing comparative case studies of two Japanese companies selected from two different time periods. The findings indicate there is a continuity observable in the mindset (...) of these companies not a change. This contradicts existing literature and suggests that the process of making CSR explicit has not been accompanied by any real change in their mindset. The result shows that ethically questionable practices have been going on behind the explicitly articulated CSR policies and implies the difficulties of delegating the power to address societal issues to business organisations. This is important particularly now when the expectations of the public regarding the responsibilities of business towards society are on the rise. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

The ignorance of Helsinki declaration is continuing in Japan for approximately 20 years. More than 400 children including preschoolers with developmental conditions including temper tantrums, hyperactivity, and/or autistic characteristics have been already operated. The cranioplasty for isolated mild trigonocephaly had been empirically introduced by a physician to re-establish the brain spatial environment, and a government-granted and multi-centered clinical observation study is now in operation without scientific verification of the procedure’s validity. The characteristic of the skull shape are too mild and (...) sometimes too subtle to be recognized by the parents and health checkup doctors. A physician may tentatively and extraordinarily use an unproven procedure in exceptional circumstances where proven and effective interventions do not exist. However, the intervention must as soon as possible be subjected to scientific scrutiny according to ethical principles in order to stop the utilization in case of misprediction. (shrink)

dai 1-kan. Nishida Kitarō -- dai 2-kan. Keiken to jikaku -- dai 3-kan. Basho -- dai 4-kan. Zen, kongenteki ningen -- dai 5-kan. Zen no fūkei -- dai 6-kan. Dōtei "Jūgyūzu" o ayumu -- dai 7-kan. Maisutā Ekkuharuto -- dai 8-kan. Hi shinpi shugi -- dai 9-kan. Kokū/Sekai -- dai 10-kan. Jiko no genshōgaku -- dai 11-kan. Shūkyō to wa nani ka.

This study developed an emotional vulnerability scale and examined its reliability and validity with a sample of university students. In health psychology, a measurement of emotional pain can contribute to the prevention and improvement of physical and mental health problems in daily life. We collected data from 361 Japanese university students. From preliminary interviews with 20 participants, 42 semantic units were extracted. For scale development, a questionnaire survey was conducted using the 42 extracted categories, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (...) were performed. Four factors emerged, which were both reliable and valid: “vulnerability toward criticism or denial,” “vulnerability toward worsening relationships,” “vulnerability toward interpersonal discord,” and “vulnerability toward procrastination and emotional avoidance.” This scale can be useful to understand vulnerability in everyday situations and grasp the vulnerable conditions experienced by individuals. This can help prevent stress responses and mental health problems, which are valuable contributions to health psychology. (shrink)

In The Human Condition, Hanna Arendt explained the rise of the social realm during the early modern period from the ancient dichotomy between the public and the private domains. For her, the rise was relevant to the establishment of political economy. This establishment was also linked with the intellectual change of a non-Western region. When Japanese intellectuals began importing Western political economy, they confronted a problem of how to fit that science to the Japanese situation, which they saw as having (...) no public realm composed of equal citizens. Although scholars have studied the reception of political economy in Japan, how the intellectuals transformed their understanding of society remains a research gap. I argue that some intellectuals in Japan thought that in order to provide space for the concept of political economy, they needed to create both a public and a social realm, and this caused some tension – a tension different from that in the European context. Indeed, Japanese people had a unique reception of Adam Smith’s political economy. Especially after Westernization (or the Meiji Restoration) began in 1868, the concept of political economy began to spread throughout Japan. Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835–1901), the most influential Enlightenment thinker in the Meiji era, denied the traditional, neo-Confucian view of economics and declared that the pursuit of wealth should be the goal of society; he thus introduced space for the concept of political economy into Japan. This space was regarded as troublesome, and Shigeki Nishimura (1828–1902), an advocate of national morality, challenged the concept, arguing that society should be based on ethics, not on the pursuit of wealth. (shrink)

More attention needs to be given to Adam Smith's view of South America. Although scholars have elucidated Smith's view of colonization, these studies have not fully clarified how Smith was influenced by the depiction of societies in South America from travel books. Though he read travel books on South America, Smith does not necessarily follow their original description of the societies found there. Instead, he sometimes distorted the original in consideration of the effects of colonization. To evaluate the impact of (...) colonization, he supposed that societies in South America were not civilized, so colonized societies could be seen as part of the process of civilization. However, he did not belittle precolonial societies. He emphasized the moral quality of the so-called savage people. As I argue in this paper, he had at least two criteria in evaluating society. In addition to economic development, Smith also recognized moral degradation as part of social development. Smith evaluated s... (shrink)

Autonomous sensory meridian response is a complex sensory-emotional experience characterized by pleasant tingling sensations initiating at the scalp. ASMR is triggered in some people by stimuli including whispering, personal attention, and crisp sounds. Since its inception, ASMR has been likened to synesthesia, but convincing empirical data directly linking ASMR with synesthesia is lacking. In this study, we examined whether the prevalence of synesthesia is indeed significantly higher in ASMR-responders than non-responders. A sample of working adults and students were surveyed about (...) their experience with ASMR and common types of synesthesia. The proportion of synesthetes who were classified as ASMR-responders was 52%, whereas 22% of ASMR-responders were also synesthetes. These results suggest that: over half of those identifying as synesthetes also experience ASMR, and that synesthesia is up to four times as common among ASMR-responders as among non-responders. Findings also suggest a prevalence rate for ASMR of approximately 20%. Overall, the co-occurrence of ASMR and synesthesia lends empirical support to the idea that ASMR may be driven by synesthetic mechanisms, but future research would benefit from examining how ASMR and synesthesia are different, as well as similar. (shrink)